Homage to Mister Dickie Greenleaf, presumed drowned.

         
            Tu Vuo Fa L'Americano!          
         

How are we to erase the selves past?     
Are we to stray     
or to stay, modest and muffled,  
in shadows of New York grey fog,     
Buildings white & feet marching mechanically atop     
Mechanized streets of black ice spitefully?     
        
-Or shall we seek to retire the wellaway day     
and holiday life away ?     
        
Here where friendship burns the wick of despair     
& Spins crackling love upon the air     
Across that whole grand Mediterranean,     
Dizzy with the bourbon of American blood!     
        
New steps (rising, descending)     
From the canto of enterprise     
To set the story right,     
      (OH Hardlot life!)     
 
But best we thought, after all,     
Best to suck the zest of Jazz-streaked Italiano          
& Parisian nights alive with light -  reverberating     
water colour'd arpeggios  
off sun-bleached San Remo.     
        
O Dannato Americano!     
        
Strangely, see, you will be a stranger always     
To stroll such cities as the old world keeps,     
L'aumento della vita con nuove canzoni!     
        
mentre le domande versato come orde answerless    
to swarm our new villas of new Love!     
        
      here where we move with veridical conviction     
Along the margins of these wicked games at play,
To bargain ourselves a more honest hand   
  In good or cruel intentions always,
Alloyed interdenominational by the way     
       & Transfixed in sunny surmise     
 
To slip slyly by and by       
Within these circles of secret sunrise     
And vistas of new charity truthfully  ,   
Reclined together in laughter and luxury.     
        
'Allo!?     i said
'Allo!     
Bring me O
 a proper company,     

         sia arrivata!      
        
      A kinship that bends memory back to form    
and would be known always     
To the displaced mantle of my yankee heart,     
By locks of perfected hair,     
A gold that is not gold, but yours,     
        
- And rich as ever there was a denial     
Of that which contrives my pulse to start over,     
Amongst the unbreakable bondage that desire builds     -
        
And all the horrors that speak truer still,  Osmose'd  
    in the speedy deep as they will,
Until discretely distilled in trembling waters that be-still     
And drown the seasons of our lust in envy's red spill .
        
Where curves the signature over lauded hands     
And follows down the callow tallow of transient breath     
To strike sweet mortality from golden head     
While my heart beats on & on.     
        
Where once gay winds fell     
And swept the circumbendibus of sand     
Which now bends to fit the double body of my doing     
Where we are glimpsed always in flight, or deftly falling     
From the agape mouth of an empty morn     
In empty rooms of antique gloom, infinitely alone.     
        
But ah! do forgive the trespass, monsieur,     
       of my epicurean thoughts!     
- And yet, one wonders, what cost to the metaphysics,     
       Fey Prodigal Heart?     
        
To live here amongst the pettiness that your tawny eyes do show     
      Pulling patterns apart to reveal     
The unreal lengths that i must go     
         
     To remain this life in dreams.     
 
        
 
and you may come to think cruel and dark of me , friend,      
      when seen from the bottomless green foam of the sea     
how these hands turned around & cold,     
to build a palace from the storm     
that could have been ours     
        
Should you occasion to tumble down with me     
with a graceful step properly.     
        
But - now now, grazie darling,   
  
But now, let us not believe that life's fiction is forever     
When the sweeter fruit is ripe and low;     
Whereyet lips may kiss true enough     
The bluet lotus bliss of his.     
        
Best still, i say,  to esteem the self to itself     
And move in new adventures underground,     
        
decked in a richer finery,     
Gossamer of silver, teas & tarts, gardens & galleries,     
 and lady fingers softly in the sea-breeze     
      to tread for-ever     
where the trestle honeymoon's such talents variously     
      lifted from a life of fire.     
        
Although, you know, i feel almost hideous at times     
      that it should come to this,  and really, Pally,     
            you ought feel poorly for that.     
        
but O Dickie m'boy, i say,     
W-why you shoulda seen     
the look on your damned face!     
they tell me t'was worth     
Ah about a million & more!     
        
- But still why'd ya have to be so blind?     
so crass, so stubborn all the time?     
with the precisions of my heart?     
     
         
         
         
*based on story & characters from Patricia Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley"          
         
         
         
         
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